Death on the Nile (Hercule Poirot, #18)

by Agatha Christie

sanguine

“Mademoiselle, I speak as a friend. Bury your dead!” She looked startled. “What do you mean?” “Give up the past! Turn to the future! What is done is done. Bitterness will not undo it.”

You have suffered—yes—but what you are doing now will only prolong the suffering.”

“You’re wrong. There are times when I almost enjoy myself.” “And that, Mademoiselle, is the worst of all.”

“Love is not everything, Mademoiselle,” Poirot said gently. “It is only when we are young that we think it is.”

And then there’s her complete assurance—her habit of command. She’s so sure of herself that she makes other people sure.

I’m always perfectly pleasant and polite! There’s not a word they can take hold of! It’s poisoning everything—everything—for them.”

Do not open your heart to evil.” Her lips fell apart; a look of bewilderment came into her eyes. Poirot went on gravely: “Because—if you do—evil will come . . . Yes, very surely evil will come . . . It will enter in and make its home within you, and after a little while it will no longer be possible to drive it out.”

What Jackie doesn’t understand is that it’s difficult for a fellow when—when—a woman cares for him as she cared for me.” “Ah?” Poirot looked up sharply. Simon blundered on: “It—it—sounds a caddish thing to say, but Jackie was too fond of me!”

men 🫠

You see, a man doesn’t want to feel that a woman cares more for him than he does for her.”

He wants to own his woman; he doesn’t want her to own him.”

“Why can’t Jackie take it like a man?” demanded Simon resentfully. A very faint smile twitched Poirot’s upper lip. “Well, you see, Monsieur Doyle, to begin with she is not a man.”

“Reasonable, mon Dieu!” cried Poirot. “There’s no reason why women shouldn’t behave like rational beings,” Simon asserted stolidly. Poirot said dryly: “Quite frequently they do. That is even more upsetting!”

“You don’t just move on from place to place as the fancy takes you? Isn’t the latter really pleasanter?” “Perhaps. But to succeed in life every detail should be arranged well beforehand.”

Poirot looked at him with a slight feeling of irritation. He thought to himself: “The Anglo-Saxon, he takes nothing seriously but playing games! He does not grow up.”

idiomatic

loquacious

penitent.

“I feel sorry for her. You can suffer so much when you are young and sensitive. I think she is suffering.”

“Mothers, Madame, are particularly ruthless when their children are in danger.”

desiccated

“There is always vanity.” “As a motive for murder?” Mrs. Allerton asked doubtfully. “Motives for murder are sometimes very trivial, Madame.”

noisome

“Take the Pyramids. Great blocks of useless masonry, put up to minister to the egoism of a despotic bloated king. Think of the sweated masses who toiled to build them and died doing it. It makes me sick to think of the suffering and torture they represent.”

“I think human beings matter more than stones.”

“I’d rather see a well fed worker than any so-called work of art. What matters is the future—not the past.”

baleful

The compartment in which Poirot found himself was occupied by an elderly lady with a very wrinkled face, a stiff white stock, a good many diamonds and an expression of reptilian contempt for the majority of mankind.

dahabeah?”

bounder!”

insouciance,

ingenuous

Wadi Halfa

dragoman

Baedeker

slipshod,”

Never to sign a document unless you read it through is admirable—altogether admirable.”

preternaturally

scrag

What good has that woman ever been to anyone or anything? She’s never worked or lifted a finger. She’s just battened on other people. She’s a parasite—and a damned unpleasant parasite. There are a lot of people on this boat I’d say the world could do without.”

That girl in here just now, signing share transfers and throwing her weight about. Hundreds and thousands of wretched workers slaving for a mere pittance to keep her in silk stockings and useless luxuries. One of the richest women in England, so someone told me—and never done a hand’s turn in her life.”

foppish

Leaning over the rail Tim Allerton was saying: “Anyhow, it’s a rotten world. . . .” Rosalie Otterbourne answered: “It’s unfair; some people have everything.” Poirot sighed. He was glad that he was no longer young.

Poirot realized with a momentary flicker of amusement that he had not made himself popular by his critical attitude. Linnet was used to unqualified admiration of all she was or did. Hercule Poirot had sinned noticeably against this creed.

sonorously

phlegmatic

perforce

It fleeted across Poirot’s mind that it seemed to be Cornelia’s fate either to be bullied or instructed. In any case she was always the listener, never the talker.

peremptory

a typical face of the new civilization, intelligent, curious, untouched by the past.